Hugh Crain
Hugh Crain is the father and patriarch of the Crain family. He used to buy old houses, flip them, and sell them along with his wife, Olivia. He later lives alone and is separated with his children. Biography 1992: Hugh and Olivia Crain move their five kids into a huge, old mansion called Hill House for the summer, while Hugh and Olivia do the work necessary to flip the property. Olivia says that when they sell the Hill House, they can build their Forever House and never have to move again. But right away, the place creeps out the kids: Nell cries out in the night when she thinks she sees “The Bent-Neck Lady,” and both Hugh and older brother Steven assure her that there’s no such entity. One night, Hugh comes down to the foyer after hearing a loud crash, discovering the downed chandelier. Simultaneously, Olivia was wandering the house, like she was sleepwalking, and heard the noise. The whole family woke up. Outside a storm raged with hailstones, and a window broke in Shirley’s room. While the family gathered flashlights, Nell disappeared in the darkness, so they all go looking for her. While he and Olivia search for their daughter, they find bits of damage from the storm, from leaks to broken glass. And around them, the ghosts of the mansion lurk quietly. Elsewhere, Hugh thinks he is following his wife through the halls only to find his wife somewhere else. The two of them hear their children screaming after seeing some “big wolf“-type creature with “glowing red eyes.” And out of nowhere, Nell turns up, saying that she was in the same spot the whole time and that no one could see her while she was yelling for help. Hugh surveys the storm damage with Horace Dudley. The place is near destroyed. Steven notices a wall weak from water damage, indicating it was worse than they imagined. The storm couldn’t have caused that much damage, meaning there must have been burst pipes. Hugh tells Olivia to make another blueprint of the house. While working in the basement with Horace Dudley, Olivia comes down with the finished blueprint and hands it to them before going upstairs. Hugh and Horace look at master plans for the structure. He thought that the Red Room upstairs was the source of the leaking water causing all the problems. When he looks over the plans he is troubled. Mr. Dudley suggests to Hugh that maybe Olivia needs to get away from Hill House for a while. He mentions that his mother was kitchen staff at Hill House, and he was born on the property in the guest house. His mother didn’t like the place, deteriorating psychologically over the years and becoming “scattered.” He said his wife Clara got pregnant, they were married on the grounds, but the baby was stillborn. Clara got terrified one night when she heard a baby crying all over the mansion, scaring her into the woods. Horace heard it himself, believing it was their stillborn baby. This is the reason the Dudleys never stay “a minute after dark.” Hugh starts looking through his wife’s office, finding the blueprints she gave him were definitely not the proper ones. They take a look inside the wall after knocking out a hole. Hugh takes a Polaroid to survey the “black mold.” He and Mr. Dudley hear a scratching noise, like something is inside the wall. Hugh looks at the Polaroid and the mold is in the shape of a human. Hugh and Steven try to air out the basement with fans, and Hugh cuts his hand bad after staring at a the child-shaped stain on the wall. This prompts him to rage at the Red Door, prying at it with tools to try opening it but nothing worked. In the basement, Hugh brakes through the brick wall where he was continually hearing the scratching sounds. He assumed it was rats, until he found a dead body. He called the Sheriff, who brought a forensic team. It was William Hill himself, who disappeared long ago. Strangely enough, it looked like he put himself there willingly, holding the tools necessary in his skeletal hands. Hugh wakes up one night to Olivia sitting on top of him, in a sleepwalk trance, holding a screwdriver to his throat. He was able to wake her, and she was frightened by where she found herself. She said she was having a nightmare, then denied she was even putting the screwdriver to his throat. He urged her to look at the master blueprint she drew. He couldn’t make sense of the shapes she drew on it, eventually figuring out it was the map of their “forever house” she repeatedly scrawled over Hill House. Hugh realized there was something terribly wrong with Olivia, and they planned to get her out of there and stay with Aunt Janet in the morning. After she leaves in the morning, Hugh takes care of the kids and Luke asks if his friend Abigail can spend the night. Hugh and everyone else besides Nell think that Abigail is imaginary so they say yes. Later, Hugh calls Olivia and asks is she is okay. Olivia lies and says that she is okay and with Aunt Janet but she is really in a motel. Hugh falls asleep on the couch and Olivia comes home and runs into Shirley who went to get a midnight snack. Shirley wakes up Hugh and tells him that Olivia never left and is still here. Olivia has woken the twins and Abigail for a tea party the four of them entered the red room. He goes to the kitchen to find the bottle of rat poison. Hugh realizes Olivia tainted the tea with rat poison, and runs upstairs to find the door to the red room open. Abigail has drunken the poisoned tea and dies. Olivia tells them that she is waking up and tells them to drink the tea. Hugh runs in and stops them from drinking the tea. Hugh gets the twins along with Shirley and Theo out of the house and makes them wait in the car so he can go get Steven. He wakes up Steven and frantically tells him they’ve got to get out of there. Olivia is limping through the halls, looking through each bedroom to find the kids. Steven is freaked out by his father’s panic, then even more freaked out when Olivia unsuccessfully tries to get into the bedroom (although Steven does not know that it is Olivia). Eventually Hugh makes his son promise to keep his eyes closed, then carries him out to the car where his equally terrified siblings are waiting. Steven quickly notice that Olivia’s not with them… and Hugh doesn’t answer why. Hugh and the kids pull up to a motel. They ask, “aren’t we going back for mom?” and he tells them not yet. He says everything is OK, the kids are to camp out at the motel, while he goes back to the house and gets Olivia. Luke says she looked hurt, and Hugh leaves, telling them he will be back soon. He arrives back at Hill House to find Olivia dead in the foyer. He holds her to him, crying about being able to “fix this," Then the Dudleys show up, looking for their little girl who they’d realized wasn’t in her bed. Turns out, Abigail’s last name is Dudley, and the groundskeeper’s wife weeps as she finds her daughter’s corpse in the Red Room. But then ghost Abigail appears, wondering what was wrong, and her parents embraced her. Hugh looks downstairs and sees Olivia’s ghost get up from her corpse and begin wandering the house, and he tells the Dudleys that he will burn the house so it couldn’t hurt anyone else. The Dudleys object, given that their daughter is now a permanent resident. They convince Hugh to keep the house and only have them in the house from now on — though boarded up so no one else can get hurt. Hugh goes back to the motel and talks to Nell before having the police pick him up and interview him. Hugh sits in an interrogation room, his eyes looking strange, haunted. The police need to “go over a few things,” given the whole incident at Hill House is strange. Sheriff Beckley goes over his statement again, wanting to get everything just right before he left. Beckley can not get any information out of Hugh because the Dudleys have convinced him to keep quiet and never tell anyone what happened. The kids later go to live with Aunt Janet and where Hugh went is never explained. Present Day: Hugh lives alone and sees Olivia everyday in his head and even talks to her. The kids and him are estranged from each other and Steven has held a grudge against him for leaving Olivia to die and not telling them what happened. Hugh gets a call from Nell. She brings up the Bent-Neck Lady, telling her father: “She‘s back.” She lies, saying she’s at home, when she’s right outside Hill House. A few hours later and he calls Steven to inform her that Nell committed suicide. Hugh goes to to the town where Shirley and Theo live. On the night before the funeral, all of the siblings are chatting at the funeral home with Nell in the coffin. Hugh arrives. Not the family reunion any of them would’ve hoped for, not that any Crain reunion would be too thrilling. It’s awkward, and dad struggles seeing all his kids together as grown adults. He keeps seeing them as children— even dead Nell in her coffin. Lurking in the background is the Bent-Neck Lady herself, watching her family grieve. Hugh goes to the bathroom and walks right through his own mind into Hill House while the siblings reminisce. Steven tries remembering a “made up word” Nell would use. Theo remembers it was “pufflelope” – a big, puffy envelope – which came from her mother talking about sending letters to Santa Claus warm on their way to the North Pole. This comes from Hugh, who does his own reminiscing about his daughter. He tells his kids Nell never asked for anything herself, only asking Santa to bring gifts for her brothers and sisters. Hugh tells his kids what his daughter said about the Bent-Neck Lady, and Steven yells at him about “hereditary mental illness.” Dad keeps on talking to his dead wife, which none of his children quite understand, looking like he’s talking to himself. All the secrets come out now, as Shirley flips at Steve for how he “mass marketed” their family’s pain, then Theo reveals taking money from the book to get her PhD, totally enraging her sister. The shitty cherry on top? Kevin finally tells his wife they took the “blood money” from Steven’s book— the reason for his second checkbook. Shirley tells both Kevin and Theo to leave. Before anybody leaves the funeral home, Shirley sees Nell with buttons on her eyes, similar to the old tradition of placing coins on the deceased’s eyes to pay the ferryman of the dead. She thinks somebody was playing a practical joke. the power in the building goes out. Hugh and Luke talk about who put the buttons on Nell’s eyes. They both know it’s of supernatural origin, not saying it fully out loud. Luke has also started figuring out his mother didn’t kill herself, just like Nell didn’t, either. This makes Steven angry again. Until Hugh starts talking about Hill House being the reason for their family’s misfortunes. They’re cut off by Nell’s casket tipping over and the lights coming back on, like Nell herself was trying to tell them to stop fighting. The next day, Hugh talks to his wife as if she’s right there with him. He asks her advice on ties as he prepares for the funeral of his daughter Nell. He goes to Shirley’s place, getting to know his grandchildren while their mother talks angrily on the phone. Kevin is there, slinking around the periphery after what he’s done and he doesn’t argue with his wife when she orders him around on business. Prior to the funeral, Hugh goes to see Theo. They chat about Luke a little, before the conversation turns to dad concerned about his daughter. She tells him how she “fucked up” big time last night— “even by Crain standards.” She also alleviates some of his guilt for how things have been between them. And Olivia’s there, watching over them. Everyone gathers at the funeral, including Steven’s estranged wife Leigh. Luke is fighting through his addiction struggles quietly and Theo’s in a battle with her hangover. Theo gets pissed off when her booty call Trish turns up, then she feels bad— it’s a mess. We also hear how Olivia guessed Theo was lesbian back when she was eight years old, before any of them ever knew. Afterwards, Aunt Janet arrives, and there’s tension between her and Hugh, yet the Crain kids are happy to have her, especially Luke, who grabs hold of her like a flotation device. At the cemetery, the Crains throw handfuls of dirt on Nell’s casket, and everyone mourns her one last time before she goes underground. Luke sees dead Nell, the Bent-Neck Lady, hovering above the grave, and his dead mother tries hauling him down below the casket with her. Steven gets upset with him, calling him a “crazy person” and acting like he didn’t see his dead sister in his apartment just days ago. After the burial, Hugh reveals to Luke he talks to his wife every day. He tries helping his son with the supernatural. Luke throws back one dad’s old quotes about “big boys,” something Hugh told him as a kid to conceal the reality of Hill House— one of many lies he told to his family, for one reason or another. Post reception, Hugh realises Luke stole Shirley’s credit card and Theo’s card. He didn’t want it to be true, noticing earlier. He didn’t say anything. The siblings figure it out, as dad tells them what he saw. Nobody knows where their brother went. The siblings are worried what’ll happen. The psychologist in Theo worries about how “suicides can cluster in families.” Steven wonders if his brother went to “Methadone Mile,” where people buy and sell drugs, and decides to go looking joined by his father. This gives the two time to bond, despite the son not being into it. Hugh’s trying anything he can to hold onto the relationship he has with his kids. Steven listens to his father talk about his mother and their marriage, describing their relationship in an analogy Olivia once used, as “the kite and the line.” In the car, Steven mentions seeing the police report on his mother’s death. Olivia had her head cracked open, her limbs were twisted and broken, among other injuries. The son is eternally angry because his father left his mother to kill herself. Yet we know there’s more to it. While Steven thinks his brother’s going back there to kill himself, his father knows that’s not the case. They stop at a gas station and they find out Luke purchased five cans of gas. He’s trying to burn the place down. Now Hugh’s scared the place will try and “defend itself.” Hugh comes clean to Steven, telling him the family’s an “unfinished meal” to Hill House, and, if given the chance, it will devour them. He kept the kids in the dark all these years because he thought it was his best option for protecting them. He says Steven is in the most danger, because of his book. He mentions the story about the vanity. He forces his son to think of the past, a passage from The Haunting of Hill House about a man repairing a clock in the house. Hugh relates this to “witness marks“— evidence of repairs having been done, telling “the story of the piece,” similar to scars. Dad says the clock wasn’t touched after they had it inspected before moving in, meaning the man repairing it in Steven’s memory was a ghost. On top of that, Steven doesn’t remember other things, like the fact they never had a tree house, despite him having memories of being in it with Luke. Steven and his father Hugh arrive at Hill House for the first time in many years. Inside, the place is overgrown with weeds and cobwebs, like it’s part of the landscape, the earth. And Steven’s already seeing ghosts, like the tall man with the bowler hat, Mr. William Hill, lurking in a doorway. Both he and dad are seeing ghosts. They find little Abigail. Finally, the truth’s baring itself to Steven in full force as a grown man, not as a young, impressionable child. Father and son go right up to the Red Room. Inside the room, Steve sees Luke lying on the floor, hurt. He goes for his brother, but the door closes behind him, keeping his father out. Hugh gets caught in the house’s dark mold. Olivia does not want them to leave because she is alone and is mad at Hugh for taking them away from her. Hugh convinces Olivia to open the Red Room, allowing him to get his children out and try getting Luke to the hospital. Hugh decides to stay at Hill House with Olivia and he dies there. They reunite and walk into the Red Room together.Category:Characters Category:Crain Family